Ramaphosa's new power plan revealed

Carol Paton - A presentation on the South African government's urgent plans to end load shedding has leaked ahead of its release, promising to "open the floodgates for private investment in generation" and to "accelerate government procurement of renewable energy, gas and battery storage".

It was presented to political parties by the presidency on Monday morning and involves a two-pronged approach: improving Eskom's capacity and increasing the energy supply.

The plan is almost identical to one presented by Eskom to government recently, and is similar to many other expert plans that have been aired in the past few weeks.

It does not, however, suspend legislation or impose a state of emergency or disaster. New legislation – for instance, to regulate licensing of own generation projects – is being explored.

It reads: “Our overriding priority is to improve Eskom's plant performance and add as much new capacity to the grid as possible, as quickly as possible. This requires removing barriers to investment in new capacity and unlocking energy from many different sources – including Eskom, independent private power producers (IPPs), businesses and households – as part of a collective, national effort.”

STRATEGY

Strategies to improve Eskom capacity include: ensuring capable skills and leadership are in place at all power stations by bringing back former employees; re-establishing good practices; and ensuring there are adequate budgets in Eskom for maintenance.

Government also says there are plans to ensure adequate diesel supplies by improving logistics and diesel storage capacity.

To increase energy supply in the immediate term, the government will give Eskom permission to procure excess energy from existing IPPs and allow it to buy energy from entities that produce their own power – like mines or industrial operations – in a standard offer. This is a request that Eskom made to government as far back as January.

Eskom will also be allowed to "procure immediately available power generation solutions on an emergency basis for two to three years, while ensuring transparency and cost-effectiveness."

This could clear the way for Eskom to contract with gas-fired powerships, assuming they could pass environmental regulation, which has so far blocked plans for their deployment.

BIDDING

Government also wants to ensure that its existing procurement programmes through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (Reippp) succeed and are expanded.

Bid window 5 of the programme, which is facing constraints due to onerous local content requirements and pricing that is now inappropriate to global price escalations, will be assisted to ensure that "all projects close" by "adopting a pragmatic approach to local content requirements".

Bid window 6, which is still open, will be expanded.

Options are also being considered to enable private generation "at a massive scale" by reducing red tape, waiving regulatory requirements as far as possible and exploring new legislation. Eskom will release additional land parcels for lease by private producers to establish projects.

Commercial enterprises and households will be incentivised to install rooftop solar by developing a feed-in tariff to can sell power to Eskom.

CAPACITY

In the next three months, the presidency says that more than 7 000MW can be added to the grid.

This will mostly be due to the return of units that have been out of service and the reduction of "partial load losses" which occur when units are run below capacity. The units returning to service are Koeberg 2 and Lethabo and Medupi 5 and 6, and the high voltage line from Cahora Bassa will be restored.

Within 12 months another 5 600MW are expected to come online, and within 18 months, close to an additional 10 000MW.

The additional capacity is, however, not guaranteed, as "key enablers will be required to ensure that it materialises," says the presentation.

Ramaphosa said over the weekend that he would present the plan to the public in the next few days. – Fin24